The goal of this article is to provide a comprehensive guide for Dell Inspiron 6400 owners seeking to install Arch Linux. It will attempt to cover all facets of hardware management, including wireless networking and hotkey support. Although this guide has been written specifically for the Inspiron 6400, many of the sub-sections can be applied to other Dell Inspiron models, including:

Hardware Specifications

The 6400 series laptop is currently available in a number of configurations and this guide will attempt to cover them all. Refer to the list below to determine whether your configuration has been documented.

Red items have yet to be covered in detail and require a Wiki entry

Base Components

Intel Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors

T2500 (2GHz/667MHz FSB/2MB Cache)

T5600 (1.83GHz/667MHz FSB/2MB Cache)

T2050 (1.66GHz/667MHz FSB/2MB Cache)

T1350 (1.66GHz/667MHz FSB/2MB Cache)

T5200 (1.60GHz/667MHz FSB/2MB Cache)

512MB/1GB/2GB 533MHz/667MHz DDR2 SDRAM Memory

15.4" Widescreen Display

WXGA (1280 x 800)

WSXGA 1280x800 with TrueLife™

WSXGA+ 1680x1050 with TrueLife™

80GB/100GB/120GB/160GB 5400/7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive

8x CD/DVD+/-RW/DL+R

Broadcom 440x 10/100 Ethernet

Conexant HDA D110 MDC V.92 modem (winmodem)

Sigmatel STAC 92xx Audio

Ricoh R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Card Reader

4 USB 2.0 Ports

Firewire port (IEEE 1394)

1 ExpressCard Slot

Synaptics touchpad with scroll zones

Video Options

128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 with HyperMemory

256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 with Hypermemory

256MB nVidia GeForce Go 7300 with TurboCache

128MB Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950

Wireless Options

Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11a/b/g)

Dell Wireless 1390

Dell Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n Wireless (Intel 4965AGN)

Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth Module

Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module

Hardware

Audio

Sigmatel/Intel Chipset

The Sigmatel audio chipset should be detected automatically during installation, requiring no input from the user.

ALSA Audio Drivers

Refer to the ALSA wiki for general assistance with volume settings, group permissions, etc.

Download and place hsfmodem_7.60.00.06oem_i386.deb and the PKGBUILD in a new folder, and run makepkg to create the package. See ABS for details on building packages.

Run hsfconfig as root to build the module and initialise the modem. A reboot is required before the modem can be initialised. Run hsfconfig again after reboot.

The modules are automatically loaded and a /dev/modem symlink is setup for use with the modem. Now use wvdial or other dialer programs to connect to the internet.

Ricoh R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Card Reader

The Ricoh card reader should work out of the box, as long as MOD_AUTOLOAD is set to yes in /etc/rc.conf. Assuming you use a HAL-aware desktop (GNOME, KDE, etc.), when a memory card is inserted, the kernel should automatically load the mmc_core/mmc_block modules and mount the new filesystem according to your desktop's automount settings.

This has been confirmed with the following card types:

SD Card

Synaptics Touchpad

The Synaptics touchpad should provide basic functions out-of-the-box, however if you would like to use the scroll zones and enable other advanced features, please refer to the Synaptics Touchpad wiki.

Power Management

ACPI Hibernation/Suspend with pm-utils

The powersave scripts have been officially replaced by pm-utils. Refer to the Pm-utils wiki for detailed instructions.

Note: ATI video card owners might need to add vga=0 to the kernel options in Template:Codeline in order to resume from suspend2ram. For exmaple:

CPU Frequency Scaling with cpufrequtils

Multimedia Buttons & Fn Hotkeys

Unfortunately, configuring multimedia buttons and function keys on your laptop can be complicated process. Factors that must be taken into consideration include your choice of Desktop Environment (or lack thereof) and the actions you wish to bind to the special buttons or keys. For a detailed explanation of what is required, please refer to the Hotkeys wiki.

The following tips may offer some assistance in getting started.

Multimedia Buttons

For the most part, the Volume and Playback buttons should be recognized as an unassigned key by the Linux kernel. In which case, all that is necessary is to bind the button to an action.

It is also worth noting that the multimedia buttons and equivalent Fn key shortcut (e.g. Fn+PgUp = Vol Up) will produce the same keycode, so if you configure the button, the Fn hotkey combo will execute the same action.

GNOME

The GNOME desktop provides an easy method for binding multimedia keys to their appropriate action.

Browse to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts and scroll down to the Sound section.

Click on an item (e.g. Mute) and then press the corresponding multimedia button

Repeat this process for all of the multimedia buttons

The volume buttons should now work system-wide, and the playback buttons will now work in media players such as Rhythmbox and Exaile.

Openbox and other Window Managers

The Template:Codeline utility is highly recommended for lightweight desktops such as Openbox--refer to the Hotkeys wiki for information.

The following is an example ~/.xbindkeysrc config file, making use of the multimedia buttons:

Function (Fn) Hotkeys

Function keys seem to be less standardized than the Volume/Playback buttons, and therefore it can be difficult to get all of them working properly. For example, the Standby shortcut (Fn+ESC) may be recognized while at the same time the Hibernate shortcut (Fn+F1) is not. To make matters more confusing, it appears that some Fn keys such as those that adjust the LCD brightness are controlled by the BIOS, independent of the Operating System. Again, the Hotkeys wiki is highly recommended reading.

The following example shows how one can configure the Dell Media Direct button, Eject (Fn+F10) and Hibernate (Fn+F1) hotkeys to execute specific commands:

First, assign kernel keycodes to the Media Direct button and Fn hotkeys, using the /etc/rc.local script (which is executed before X loads):